Documentation and Best Practices

Learn how to use Cloudability and get the most out of our cloud cost management tool.

Dashboard Walkthrough

The Cloudability Dashboard is your go-to resource for tracking cloud cost and usage data. It's the first screen that you see upon login, featuring a set of customizable Widgets that you can build and arrange according what data and reports are most relevant to you.

1. Things you should know about Widgets

Widgets can be moved and sized within a set grid. The grid is 4 columns wide and can be extended down the page as far as needed to support the Widgets on the page.

Hovering over the title of a Widget reveals additional controls, and also allows you to move the widget to other locations on the page (it will snap to the grid).

The bottom right corner of each widget has an arrow that allows you to resize the widget; it will snap to the grid after sizing.

2. Creating and editing Widgets

From your Cloudability Dashboard, click the yellow plus (+) button:

There are several Widget types to choose from, each of which has a unique set of options to customize the data displayed on your Dashboard. For example Chart Widgets can include multiple layers of data, and be displayed as lines or bars. On the other hand, the Estimate Widget has a single purpose - to calculate your estimated monthly costs:

Next, select the time period to display in the Widget. If a dynamic date range is selected, the Widget will update daily as fresh data is processed.

Note: all times are listed in UTC.

A Time Period Comparison can also be selected in order to analyze two discrete periods of time:

Next, choose your X-axis (the horizontal axis) dimension. It can be either a 'Cost' dimension (from vendor billing files) or a 'Utilization' dimension (from an API like Cloudwatch). This dimension serves as the X-axis for every layer of data you add to the Widget:

Then, select a metric for the Y-axis of your first chart layer (data series). The drop-down will be limited to metrics associated with the dimension you chose earlier (e.g. you'll only see Cost metrics, if you chose a Cost dimension earlier):

You also can configure a number of advanced options for the layer:

Above you can see the following options, some of which are unique to the Chart Widget type:

Group By - add a secondary dimension to dive deeper into the data

Series Name - add a prefix to the series name on the chart to help differentiate it from other chart layers you create

Limit Results to - only show the top (or bottom, depending on the sort) N number of items

Hide Scale - hide it from the chart axis

Show Trendline - show a line representing the aggregate trajectory of the data across the series

Hide Legend - remove it from the chart display

Note: if you add a secondary dimension to a widget (Group By), the Trendline and Limit options are disabled.

You can also add one or more filters to a chart layer, to hone in on the specific data points you are after. Filters can be added based on tags, account groups, products, and many other cost and usage dimensions and metrics. You can select from a variety of operators as well:

You can also add more layers to the Widget, to overlay additional metrics on the chart. You can use a compatible Cost or Utilization metric depending on the original X-axis you chose at the beginning of the process:

Finally, save your new customized Widget to your Dashboard!

3. Things you should know about Dashboards

You can create multiple Dashboards in addition to your default dashboard. For example you could create a Dashboard for your Operations team, a dashboard for your Finance team, and one to track Reservations.

Starred dashboards appear in the sidebar for quick access.

You can share Dashboards with other users in your organization (more on that below).

4. Creating and editing Dashboards

You can create a new Dashboard via the yellow plus (+) at the top the page, or the Dashboard sidebar:

You can edit existing Dashboards by clicking the pencil icon that appears when you hover over a Dashboard's title.

5. Sharing a Dashboard

You can share Dashboards with other users in your company's Cloudability account -- or the entire organization all at once.

There are also settings to choose between Editable or View-only permissions for your shared Dashboard, depending on the level of collaboration you'd like to provide for your team:

Also, each Dashboard has a unique URL (e.g. app.cloudability.com/#/dashboard/12345) that can be shared with other Cloudability users in your account, for easy pasting into emails or messaging tools.

6. Adding Annotations

You can create an annotation for a specific date, to more easily remember events that impacted your data. These annotations will show up on any Dashboard Widget that shows that specific date in the chart. Annotations are currently user specific.